Being in a relatively new profession compared to accounting or law, female technology and digital executives today come from diverse backgrounds.

Some got into ICT on the way to an entirely different field. Once there, they find ICT provides a plethora of interesting areas to work on, and even a springboard for C-suite roles.

They find that the sector opens so many options not only for them, but also their teams. And from there, they help lay the groundwork for a new ecosystem where women and other minority groups can flourish.

June 2020

CIO New Zealand

Mike Foley is joining the Waikato District Health Board as chief digital officer. He comes from WorkSafe NZ where he was chief digital and information officer for two-and-a-half years. He has also been CIO at Instant Finance, Auckland Council and Watercare.

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‘Is this too technical? Should I dumb it down?’ ‘No’, she retortedWed, 27 May 2020 13:03:00 -0700Divina ParedesDivina Paredes

Growing up in Turkey, her parents recalled that when a repair person would come to their house, Figen Ulgen would just stand by and ask questions.

“I have always been a curious person,” says Ulgen, who parlayed this into a career as a data scientist, having completed a PhD in machine learning and stints at Intel, Microsoft and McKinsey.

Ulgen now heads analytics and insights at Woolworths NZ, which operates Countdown supermarkets. So how did she get into technology and right into one of the hottest areas in ICT, data science?

“I give my brothers credit for always challenging me,” says Ulgen. “They were seven years older than me, so I always got challenged. For everything, I had two choices, I can buckle down or I can rise up to the challenge. I always end up rising to the challenges.”

In 10 years, the circular economy will be the only economy, replacing wasteful linear economies, predicts Gartner.

According to Gartner, circular economic business models encourage continuous reuse of materials to minimise waste and the demand for additional natural resource consumption.

“The circular economy creates an ecosystem of materials,” notes Sarah Watt, senior director analyst at Gartner. “What was previously viewed as waste now has value. However those ecosystems are complex, and include many interdependencies and feedback loops.”

Sarah Watt

Watt says the latest Gartner Future of Supply Chain Survey shows that 35 per cent of companies believe digital technology will be a key enabler for circular economy strategies. Only 12 per cent of organisations, however, have linked their circular economy and digital technology strategies.

‘What’s my bill? What’s my account balance? How much energy did I use?’

Questions flew thick and fast from customers to Mercury’s online channels and contact centres during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“We have seen 30 per cent increase in interactions with our customers across all engagement channels,” says Kevin Angland, general manager retail and digital at the energy company.

He notes that the call centre, in particular, has been very active during the lockdown. Some of the increase, he adds, has been proactively driven by Mercury engaging with their customers, as they recognise most customers are consuming more electricity at home. During the lockdown, Mercury offered a free power hour every day for a week where customers could nominate their preferred hour to receive free power.

How Asia-Pacific CIOs responded to COVID-19

Following the hard-hitting sucker punch delivered by COVID-19, the world is slowly sobering up to the social and economic realities of such a devastating pandemic. Whether in Bangkok or Brisbane, Ahmedabad or Auckland, businesses are adjusting in real time as market dynamics continue to shift at pace, placing the CIO at the epicentre of such response efforts.

Editors from the CIO editions in ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand and India have joined forces to share in-market challenges, key lessons and examples of best practice across the Asia-Pacific region during the COVID-19 pandemic:

“I wear two hats at AUT,” says Liz Gosling, who is both chief information officer and director of operations for the emergency management team at the university.

"It is a stretch assignment,” says Gosling, who welcomes the added remit. “Sometimes, technology people get pushed into a box where everybody thinks that’s all they can do,” she explains. "It was encouraging to be recognised as having the capability to be doing something beyond ICT and strategically important for the university.”

Different businesses will have different goals around data usage, says Professor Leo Paas, head of the department of marketing at the University of Auckland Business School.

Nonetheless, a common adage applies across sectors: “Before doing anything with data, you need to know what your key concern is,” says Paas, discussing the remit of one of the newest C-suite roles, the chief data officer.

For instance, a mobile phone company’s key concern is when customers switch from one provider to another. “So, you want to use big data to reduce this switching, and your goal is customer retention,” says Paas.

In the case of banks, the key concern is not people switching banks. People do not switch banks often, but banks are concerned their customers are buying some of the products they offer from competitors. “Their goal is to get the optimal share of wallet and cross-selling,” he notes.

ANZ Bank New Zealand was able to quickly scale out remote working for its staff as the COVID-19 crisis surged. More than 6500 employees were able to work from home in time for the lockdown, and the bank’s websites and apps handled the increased traffic.

The bank’s disaster recovery and business continuity planning regularly identifies and tests a range of scenarios, including a pandemic, explains Anthony Watson, enterprise domains lead for ANZ Banking Group in New Zealand. He notes that they take lessons from each testing, which happens regularly at different scales, several times a year.

The bank’s ability to pivot quickly to the changes demanded by the ongoing coronavirus crisis, however, was actually due to “a number of layers put in place in recent years”, says Watson.

The ongoing shift to the ‘as a service environment’ heightens the need to mitigate risks to ensure successful delivery of software projects, says Gerard Doolin, a New Zealand-trained lawyer and IT software project disputes mediator.

In this Q and A with CIO New Zealand, he delves into the results of a recent survey among CIOs and other C-suite executives on the current challenges facing both organisations and technology providers in the delivery of software project contracts.

The pandemic has turned out to be a busy time for most ICT teams as they roll out remote working to 100 per cent of their colleagues, observes Owen McCall, a former CIO and now business mentor and strategist.

McCall says most ICT teams he has spoken to, however, have successfully transitioned their office-bound organisations into virtual organisations within a week or two. He believes this situation provides the right impetus to invest further in improving the digital literacy of employees.

Owen McCall

“Just as customers are needing to change their behaviour, so are our teams,” says McCall. He urges ICT leaders to take the opportunity the forced change presents to support teams to build their digital skills so they can be increasingly effective in using digital tools and working ‘online’.

Most firms have general business recovery plans that address the immediate response to an incident and assume a return to normal operations after several days or a week. In the case of COVID-19, business recovery requires a specialised plan, according to Forrester.

In a new report, Forrester analysts advise organisations to prepare a phased approach to recovery, and establish pandemic management protocols or PMPs before returning employees to work. “Unlike extreme weather events or sudden IT failures, pandemics don’t abruptly end and allow you to simply recover back to normal operations. As with pandemic planning, recovery from a pandemic requires a unique response due to its long duration, cascading economic impacts, and risk of recurring outbreaks. But most importantly, pandemic recovery requires you to focus on carefully managing the health, safety, and well-being of employees, customers, partners, and the community,” the report states.

Transaction Services Group is looking for a new global chief information officer following the resignation of David Kennedy.

Kennedy will leave at the end of May. He joined TSG more than five years ago, and worked with the executive team in building it to become a $1billion software company.

TSG, with headquarters in Auckland, provides integrated payments, software, and value-added services to help gyms, community clubs, and childcare centres manage their members and customers. It operates across Australia and the UK and has customers in Japan, Europe, and the US.

He joined TSG from Orion health, where he started as chief information security officer until the role was integrated into the inaugural CIO post. He was also an advisor at KPMG for almost a decade, and was IT security architect with IBM Global Services for four years.

“There is a lot of speculation as to what life in a post-COVID-19 level 4 world will look like,” says Steve Griffin, business coach and trainer. “One thing is certain, ‘normality’ will never be the same again.”

For the foreseeable future, remote working and physical separation are the new norm, says Griffin, as he shares pointers on how CIOs can lead through the changed environment.

Steve Griffin

“CIOs will have the additional management challenge of not only providing seamless services, reliable access, and secure interactions, but achieving all this with a hybrid mix of on-site and remote workers.”

All enterprises are changing their business models, taking steps to become more agile, and cutting back on unessential activities to survive the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

However as Gartner analysts Leigh McMullen and Dave Aron point out, a lot of valuable learning is likely to come from how enterprises manage this crisis. “Use these lessons to accelerate your enterprise transformation,” they state.

It is an advice the following technology and digital leaders across New Zealand’s public and private sectors are taking heed.

Allan Lightbourne of Tauranga City Council: ‘Don’t be distracted by technical, short-term thinking’